Taylor Swift has always been adept at metabolising the criticisms that are levelled against her, only to come back with a project that refutes these criticisms outright. When critics took issue with Red’s straddling of the borders between country and pop, she dove headfirst into the latter genre in 1989. When diehard Swifties and casual fans alike laughed off the saccharine lyrics and production on Lover, she returned with folklore and evermore a year later, showcasing the true breadth and depth of her narrative capacity.

Swift’s twelfth album, 2025’s The Life of a Showgirl, has proven to be her most polarising album to date. Each individual critic seemed to harbour different sentiments towards the project as a whole, while many Swifties found varying degrees of fault again in the quality of the songwriting, its commitment to its premise, and the number of songs that were dedicated to Travis Kelce, to whom Swift announced her engagement during the album’s promotional cycle. Now, in 2026 and in the wake of her star-studded and extravagant wedding at Madison Square Garden—an event which itself wasn’t without its fair share of detractors—Swift has returned with four new tracks that bookend an album that had already gotten audiences up in arms.

Rumours about a new project naturally began to stir after Swift appeared in a Law & Order sketch during this year’s Primetime Emmy Awards alongside Mariska Hargitay (whose character, Detective Olivia Benson, is the namesake of one of Swift’s cats). When Swift gave off a string of seemingly unconnected words, the rumour mill went buzzing—some thought that Swift might be hinting at her thirteenth studio album, or a re-recording of her debut record, which celebrates its twentieth anniversary this year. But lo and behold, these clues lead to the announcement of a deluxe edition of Showgirl, subtitled The Encore.

In a way, a deluxe edition to Showgirl could’ve been an opportunity for Swift to win back some of the favour that the record itself seemed to have earned her. The caption for the Instagram post announcing the album made it clear that these songs had been recorded by Swift, Max Martin and Shellback (both collaborators on Showgirl), suggesting a potential effort at course correction. This, however, is certainly not the case.

“Patient Zero”, the first of the four new tracks—accompanied by a music video starring Swift, Dakota Johnson and Colin Farrell—sees Swift extend an olive branch to the new partner of one of her own exes. Swift then puts the writing on the wall about what this new partner can expect (spoiler alert: it’s not pretty). The Irish fiddle that underscores the track feels particularly out of place amidst the Max Martin pop production, while the lyrics feel tepid and prescriptive (most notably the bridge, which—in a manner quite antithetical to the usual incisiveness of Swift’s pen—crumbles under its own flimsy foundation). The lyrics of “Patient Zero” read more like hastily sketched diary entries, placeholders that Swift will return to at a later date to finesse. 

“Cleaveland!” follows in the footsteps of much of Showgirl in that it’s another ode to her now-husband Kelce. Against a twee Christmas-carol sonic backdrop, Swift catalogues the specific comments that have been levelled against her before asserting that none of that matters—she’s found her man and even taken her back to his hometown to show her around. On the one hand, this comes off as a not unfamiliar moment of Swift’s self-absorption with regards to her ‘haters’, especially when the structure of the song suggests that she’s occupied with all this while her partner is trying to show her something about himself. On the other, the palatable second-hand embarrassment brought about by the lyrics (“The taste of me is acquired/but it’s his favourite dish”) only call to mind the various songs in Swift’s own discography that articulate this kind of commentary more incisively (see: “Blank Space”, “But Daddy I Love Him”, even “Anti-Hero”).

“Pink Clouding” feels like it could have easily been lifted from the annals of Swift’s Lover- or Midnights-era studio sessions, with its up-in-the-clouds effervescence aptly reflecting the feeling of a love that feels intoxicating. The conversational cadence of the bridge is solid, and the metaphor purported by the title is serviceable. However, some of its lyrics don’t actually seem to make much sense (one might ask what exactly is being communicated by lines such as “fuchsia forever intertwined”) and its allusions to a previous failed relationship (many Swifties were quick to cite Swift’s relationship with Tom Hiddleston as the real-life reference point) somewhat feel out of place given Showgirl’s lyrical devotions to Kelce. In any case, it feels like the first of the tracks that could fly under the radar, even if it doesn’t necessarily seem to fit neatly into the Showgirl ethos or mythology.

“Babylon”, the last of the four tracks, appears to depict a showgirl’s homecoming. Weaving through a series of disparate images about family matters and Christmas lights, it winds up with a somewhat uninspired message that you don’t know what you’ve got until it’s gone and that you can never go home again. Again, this is well-trod ground for Swift. And again, the particularities of Swift’s point of view and the manner in which she executes it—what are arguably the hallmarks of her best work—are sorely missed. Instead, the song skims the surface of its pathos and throws in a few more dubious lyrics (“A liberated libertine who then longed for home”) for good measure. And just like that, the addendum to Showgirl concludes.

There’s no denying that Taylor Swift is in a transitional point in her career, as she has been many times over. And indeed, her staying power can in no small part be attributed to her ability to weather the storms of fame, creativity and output. It’s difficult to make sense, then, of what exactly the point of The Encore is: it doesn’t acknowledge or correct any of the shortcomings on the album proper, nor how it was received; it doesn’t make the premise of the album any more expansive or salient; if anything, it doubles down on the various issues that audiences and critics alike had with Showgirl’s lyricism, sound and aesthetics. There’s no denying that Swift still sits at the summit of the music industry and cultural influence. What The Encore seems to suggest, however, is that such a position has made Swift unable to take on any opinions from beyond her sphere of tried-and-true collaborators and her personal network. All in all, The Encore really doesn’t seem to do any favours for Swift, her audience or her legacy. If nothing else, it’s abundantly clear that it’s time for the curtain to descend on the Showgirl era once and for all.